Awesome Octopus

Created by engineers at the University of Science and Technology of China, this biomimetic soft robot moves like an octopus tentacle. SpiRobs can bend, twist, and grasp a variety of objects. The mechanical arm is capable of lifting up to 260 times its weight while having a gentle enough grip to handle fragile objects.

Add some whimsy to your house plants with these goofy tentacles from CraftIRL. The set of eight 3D-printed tentacles turns your plants into an undersea wonderland as an imaginary octopus dances between the leaves. They vary in shape for visual interest and come in small and medium sizes in many colors. We love the glow-in-the-dark suckers.

It’s common knowledge that octopi are intelligent creatures. After he purchased an octopus from a pet store, engineer Mark Rober wanted to release the animal back into the ocean. Before he could do that, he built a challenging maze to confirm that Sashimi would be able to hunt for food after being hand-fed for most of her life.

This sculptural octopus art can hold headphones, hats, purses, or small accessories. Its head and eight tentacles offer multiple hanging positions and come with hanging hardware. It’s one of the many fun 3D-printed headphone holders you can find in the M3is3D Etsy shop.

While diving in Lempeh, Indonesia, Pall Sigurdsson came across a tiny coconut octopus wearing a plastic cup. Realizing it needed a sturdier survival shelter, he stayed patiently on the seafloor with the little guy while his fellow divers collected shells. After checking out a few options, the octopus settled into its new and improved home.

If we learned anything from playing Octodad, it’s that octopus tentacles can grab all sorts of things. This elegant bronze cephalopod from Coppertist Wu stands at the ready to hold onto your phone, tablet, or a pen while keeping watch over your desktop. It measures 3.5″ L x 1.9″ W x 1.9″ H and weighs 7.4 oz.

We’re so used to seeing octopi swimming, we sometimes forget that they can use their tentacles to walk too. Though in the case of this extraordinary cephalapod, he’s in a hurry and chooses to run to his destination. We just want to put this video on a loop and use it as our wallpaper.

Artist Blake McFarland previously showed off his sculpting skills by making a lion and a tiger out of tires. This time, he created an awesome-looking octopus by creating a steel, foam, and fiberglass form, then wrapping it in old bike tires. The glass eyes by artist Becca Barnet help bring it to life.

Octopi thrive on shellfish and other small sea creatures. But when an octopus thinks it can gobble down a mantis shrimp, it gets quite the surprise from the powerful crustacean. Nat Geo WILD captured this amazing footage of the terrifying shrimp as it protects itself and delivers blow after blow on its eight-legged foe.

WorksByaHurst asks his followers to send in random items for him to build things from. When he received a box full of old bicycle parts, the idea that struck him was to turn the chains into the tentacles and body of an octopus. While he was working on it, all we could think of was those creepy Sentinels from The Matrix.

In the world of Spider-Man, Dr. Otto Octavius (better known as Doc Ock) has been augmented with a set of mechanical tentacles he uses for nefarious purposes. JLaservideo teamed up with a few internet friends to design and build a working tentacle backpack, and then gave it mind-control capabilities.

Swiss-Danish watchmaker Linde Werdelin teamed up with James Thompson of Black Badger to create this stunning limited-edition automatic dive watch. It features a lightweight aerospace-grade ALW case, and a multi-layer glowing blue dial that gets more saturated as your environment gets darker. It’s waterproof to 300 meters.

Bern, Switzerland illustrator Jared Muralt created this wondrous image of a mythical giant octopus for The New York Times’ Kids Edition. Now you can hang a copy of the artwork on your wall. The offset print measures 836mm x 483mm (~32.9″ x 19.0″) and would look fantastic in any nautically-themed space.

We already know that octopi are incredibly smart creatures. What we don’t know is if their big brains dream like ours. In this fascinating footage from Nature on PBS, we witness a octopus changing colors as she sleeps, while the narrator imagines what she might be dreaming about.

Hundreds of millions of years ago, the earliest ancestors of cephalopods like squids rose up from the ocean floor, donning a hard shell. PBS Eons explores the evolutionary adaptations that caused the squid to shed its protective outer covering to improve its mobility.

Artists FilthyLuker and Pedro Estrellas of Designs In Air bring old buildings to life by filling them with monsters. Their latest installation features an inflatable sea creature with 20 tentacles sticking out of Building 611 at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. See it in person through 11/16/18.